by Nancy N. Rue
“That’s huge, Jess,” he said.
“He only let me watch.”
“He never let me watch. Not that many sushi chefs in America make their own leaf decorations. You go to any other sushi bar here and you get plastic leaves. Him letting you see how he does it is a big deal.”
“Do you think I should ask him to let me try it?” I said.
Lou paused over the clam sauce pot he was scrubbing and looked at me. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know.”
“How do you think he’d respond if you asked him?”
“He’d probably give me the hairy eyeball,” I said.
Lou let out one of his deep-down chuckles. “Then there’s your answer.”
“But I really want to do it.”
“How have you gotten to do the other things you’ve wanted to do there?” Lou said.
I hoisted myself onto the counter and picked up a ladle to dry it. “He just out of the blue said, ‘You’re serving,’ or ‘You can watch me make an eel roll.’”
“So why fix something if it isn’t broken?” Lou said.
“Excuse me?” I said.
Lou just went back to scrubbing the pot.
“So I should just wait until he asks me?” I said.
“Sounds like it.”
“I wonder when that’s going to be.”
“Probably when you’re ready,” Lou said.
Evidently I wasn’t ready yet, but watching Bonsai continued to be cool, and so did serving sushi and all the other stuff I did in the restaurant. And then, of course, there was my afternoon babysitting by Rocky.
I hated that I couldn’t tease him about Weezie having a major crush on him, because if I did I would have been answering his questions for the rest of my life. Besides, most of the time we were too busy to spend much time pushing each other’s buttons, as Lou would say.
We did everything in St. Augustine that we could do without wheels, and after I got my first paycheck–ever, in my whole life–I paid my own way when we went to the wax museum, the Oldest Wooden Schoolhouse, every coffee shop in the whole town, and even Ripley’s Believe It or Not! “Odditorium”– which was full of some very strange things people claimed were real. That’s where Rocky slipped up and got me another question–he pointed to the mummified cat and said he wondered if doing that to me would keep me from talking so much.
I made him suffer for a while before I asked my question. I waited until we were having raw oysters–which he bet I wouldn’t be able to eat but I did–sitting outside at the Santa Maria Restaurant on a pier sticking out over the bay. I actually liked the way they slithered down my throat.
“Okay, you’re killing me,” Rocky said. “Ask the question already.”
“I want to know why your parents gave you a name like Oswald,” I said. “Did they name you after some relative that had a lot of money or something?”
Rocky popped the last oyster into his mouth. I watched in fascination as he swallowed.
“Isn’t it the weirdest feeling?” I said.
“What? Being named Oswald?”
“No, eating oysters.”
“If I answer that, do I get out of the other question?”
“Hello! No.”
He fiddled with the squeezed-out lemon on the plate. I suddenly felt squirmy.
“You really don’t have to answer if you don’t want to,” I said. “It was kind of a rude question.”
Rocky dropped the lemon and stared at me. “All right, who are you and what have you done with Red?”
My face, I knew, was turning the color of my nickname.
“Seriously,” he said, “why do you all of a sudden care about my feelings?”
“I don’t,” I said. And then I wrinkled my nose at him to make him think I meant it. I didn’t. Why was it the minute we were just…being, I had to be reminded that this could only go so far?
“I read–someplace–” I said, “that you should think about how you want people to treat you, and then treat them that way. That’s all I’m trying to do. You’re just my guinea pig, okay?”
Rocky sat back and put his hands behind his head and I watched the muscles ripple. “I was named after my father. I’m Oswald Kenneth Luke Junior.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, that’s pretty cool, I guess. Weezie’s all proud because she’s named after her father.”
“Yeah, well, my old man ain’t Lou, trust me.”
His voice had a sudden edge to it. It was my turn to fiddle with the lemon.
“If he was even close to being the man Lou is, I’d go by Oswald and deck the first kid that gave me grief about it.”
The way his hands were now strangling the arms of the chair, I didn’t doubt that for a minute.
“So that’s why you’d rather be called Rocky,” I said.
“Yeah. I figure if I try not to be like him in any way, I might not end up in prison.”
“Your father’s in prison?” It was my first Blurt in days and I immediately wanted to cut my tongue out.
But Rocky just nodded and said, “Armed robbery– assault–”
“You don’t have to tell me,” I said.
“It’s not like it’s a big secret. And Lou says it isn’t about me so I don’t have anything to be ashamed of.”
“You don’t,” I said. “And I don’t think you’re ever going to be like your–like Oswald.”
“Like you know me so well.”
“If you keep messing up and having to answer my questions, pretty soon I’ll know everything.”
“Don’t hold your breath, Red,” he said. But he gave me the gap-toothed grin and I was glad.
So glad I wanted him to tell me his entire life history– everything that ever happened to him. And I wanted to tell him mine–while he put his arms around me and we stopped flirting and got the kind of serious I never wanted to be before.
I was that glad. Too glad. And I couldn’t let it go any further.
“Insult me,” I said.
Rocky blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Call me Crash or something. I want to ask you another question.”
“I’m not doing that,” he said. “Just ask me.”
His eyes were some kind of soft, and I wanted to just forget it. But I couldn’t. Not if I was going to do for him what I would want him to do for me.
I took in a breath. “Is it harder to do this for Lou now that you know about me?”
“What are you talking about, Red?” he said, but he put up his hand before I could answer. “You know what, there is nothing wrong with your attention span. You’ve got focus–and ALL you focus on is what’s wrong with you.”
I pushed my plate away from me, and I felt suddenly sick. This wasn’t going the way I wanted it to.
“All I’m trying to do,” I said, “is let you off the hook.”
“What ‘hook’?”
I motioned my hand back and forth between us. “This one,” I said.
Rocky dragged his hand through his hair. And then he stood with a jerk and picked up the check from the edge of the table. “I’ll get this,” he said. “We’ve gotta get back.”
I nodded–miserably–and watched him cross to the door and go into the restaurant, his arms rippling their muscles, his tall self telling the world he had it goin’ on. I could’ve been walking with him, but I’d just blown it.
But I had to. Before I got any gladder every time he gave me that gap-toothed smile.
Lou and I picked up Weezie that afternoon. I was so crushed about Rocky and the way he’d had nothing to say all the way back to the shop and how I had no one to blame but myself–I wasn’t even dreading trying to “love” my little sister. Rocky or no Rocky, I still had to do it.
At first Weezie continued to do her imitation of a Popsicle with me, but I still let her have the bedroom for the entire weekend and gave her my neon orange flip-flops that I saw her eyeing more than once. Saturday night when she and I were cleaning up after, yes, coconut sh
rimp, and Lou went to the store to get more popcorn so we could watch Shrek and Shrek 2, I even told her something I would have wanted to hear if I had been her.
“Your dad really wishes you lived with him all the time,” I said.
She was careful not to look at me. “How do you know?” she said.
“He told me.”
“No, he didn’t.”
I had to take a deep breath so I wouldn’t stuff a dish towel up her nose.
“Yes, he did,” I said. “He said it kills him that he doesn’t get to wake you up every morning and make sure you’re eating right and tuck you in at night.” I smiled at her. “You know, all the stuff you hate.”
“I don’t hate it!”
“Look me in the face and tell me you don’t hate broccoli and popcorn without butter,” I said.
She twisted her mouth. “Okay, I do hate that.”
“And going to bed at nine o’clock on a school night.”
“If I lived here, he’d make me go to bed at eight thirty.”
“Ouch.”
“What time does he make you go to bed?” she said.
“Ten.”
“Not fair!”
“That’s still pretty tight when you’re fifteen.”
“I guess. I can’t wait to be fifteen.”
I hopped up onto the counter. She hopped up with me.
“How come you want to be fifteen?” I said.
“Because I wanna wear makeup.”
“Why can’t you wear makeup now?”
She rolled her eyes at me. “Are you kidding? Daddy doesn’t even like it when I put on colored ChapStick.”
“That’s because you’re his little girl,” I said.
She rolled the eyes again, but a smile played at the corners of her lips. She was actually sort of cute in a preteeny way.
“So he won’t let you wear makeup in public,” I said, without adding that, hello, she was ten. “But does he say you can’t learn how to use it so you’ll be ready when you’re fifteen and won’t look like Ronald McDonald the first time you try to put on lipstick by yourself?”
Her eyebrows knitted together like she was trying to sort that all out, and then she slowly shook her head.
“So are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I said.
“Are you thinking that you could show me how to put on lipstick?” she said–almost shyly, almost like she was afraid that wasn’t what I was thinking at all.
“A little lipstick,” I said. “A little blush. No eye makeup– you’re not supposed to share that–but I have some way-cool face glitter that’ll go great with your nails.”
“You don’t think Daddy’ll get mad?”
I pulled in my chin. “Does he ever get mad?”
“He got mad at me the other Sunday when I was a brat to you.”
“That was mad?” I said.
She nodded, eyes round.
“Then I think we can handle that,” I said.
But Lou didn’t get mad. Not when he came home from the grocery store and found us in the bathroom together, Weezie sitting on the counter, me dusting clear glitter on her face, and both of us giggling like we were at a sleepover. In fact, he got the Ping-Pong ball going in his throat and pretty much had to force himself to say, “Now, you realize you can’t wear that out of the house, Weezie.”
“I kno-ow,” Weezie said.
“Yeah, Dad,” I said. “I mean, seriously.”
He left the bathroom then. I heard him blowing his nose in the kitchen.
Meanwhile, Weezie was gazing at herself in the mirror.
“You do look fab,” I said.
She didn’t answer. But she didn’t tell me I didn’t know anything because I had a disorder, either.
The house phone rang and she jumped off the counter.
“That’s probably my mom,” she said. “I can’t wait to tell her.”
I couldn’t hold back a grin as I followed her out to the kitchen. And then I felt it fade as Lou said, “Oh. Hey, Brooke.”
It wasn’t Weezie’s mom. It was mine.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Lou steered Weezie toward the bedroom while he listened on the phone. When I started to follow her in, he shook his head and motioned for me to go to the Everything Room with him and then closed the bedroom door. He didn’t tell me to sit down and I couldn’t have anyway.
We both just stood in the middle of the room while my mother shrieked on the other end of the phone line. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but I didn’t really have to. The tone of her screeching told me everything I needed to know. She was flipping out.
When it was obvious she wasn’t going to stop anytime soon, Lou just broke in with, “Brooke, where are you?”
She shrieked some more, but I could tell what was happening from the tight-tighter-tightest looks on Lou’s face and the things he was saying:
“Okay–I just thought maybe you’d left the hospital…Are you still on your medication?” There was a slight pause there while he winced. Then, “Why isn’t that my business?…Does anybody know you’re making this call?…Because you’re out of control, Brooke, that’s why I’m asking.”
I shook my head at Lou. Not a good thing to say to my mother, especially when she was No-Bed, like she obviously was now. My grandfather’s wife had said that to her once, which was one of the reasons we didn’t see them anymore.
Lou nodded at me and closed his eyes. “Okay, poor choice of words. You just sound really upset and…Yeah, you do have a right to your feelings but…Absolutely not–I haven’t said a negative thing about you to Jessie.”
It hit me then that he was repeating things she said so I could be part of the conversation. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be.
“If she wants to talk to you, yes, I’ll put her on.” Lou looked at me, eyebrows raised, and pointed to the phone.
Vampire bats were multiplying in my stomach, but I nodded and put out my hand. When Lou backed toward the kitchen, I shook my head at him so hard it hurt. He sat on the arm of the couch, but he didn’t watch me as I put the phone to my ear.
“Hi, Mom,” I said in a voice I could barely hear.
“Jessie?” she said. The shriek was gone, but she still sounded like one wrong syllable from me would fire it up again.
“It’s me,” I said.
“Is Lou still in the room with you?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“All right, I’m going to call you back later on that other number you called me on before. What was that?”
“A cell phone,” I said.
“Where did you get a cell phone?”
“Lou gave it to me–”
“The man is shameless.” The shriek threatened, but I heard her breathe in shallow little gasps and it went back to where it had been hiding before. “I’ll call you at that number so we can talk without him hearing every word we’re saying.”
“He can’t hear you now,” I said.
Lou’s head jerked up. I shrugged at him.
“Don’t bet on it,” she said. “He probably has the phone bugged.”
“Bugged?”
“Shhhh. Jessie, you are so dense.” She breathed fast again. “That’s why I’m going to call you on your cell. Does he ever leave you alone?”
“Well–”
“What time do you go to your room at night–or are you still roaming around at all hours like a raccoon?”
“Ten o’clock,” I said through my teeth.
“I’ll call you tomorrow night at ten fifteen. Do you think you can remember that?”
I didn’t answer her. I was afraid I’d do some shrieking of my own.
“All right, whatever–just keep your cell phone with you, if you can find it. And, Jessie, for heaven’s sake, don’t tell Lou I’m going to call you. Do you get that?”
“Yeah, I get it,” I said, and I handed the phone back to Lou and hurled myself out onto the deck so I could breathe.
Lou was beside me in about three seconds.<
br />
“What else did she say?” I said.
“Nothing. She hung up. You okay?”
I looked up into Lou’s eyes, which were their saddest yet. I saw him swallow hard. I was right there with him.
“She sounded like she was losing it,” I said.
“She’s pretty unstable. Kind of disturbing, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t even know what to say to her.”
Lou leaned on the railing. “Do you want to tell me what she said to you? You don’t have to, but if you want to process it–”
“She said she’s going to call me on my cell tomorrow night so she can talk to me when you aren’t around.”
For once I didn’t regret a Blurt. Lou straightened up and stuck his hands in the pockets of his shorts.
“Do you want to talk to her alone?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s sort of creepy, her wanting to tell me something she doesn’t want you to hear. She said you might have your phone bugged. It’s like she’s paranoid.”
“We don’t know if that’s what it is…” He tilted his head at me. “Does it scare you, Jess?”
“Yes,” I said, around the lump in my throat. “Can I just give you my cell phone tomorrow so I won’t be there when she calls?”
“You can,” Lou said. He dragged out the can.
“Why is there always a but?” I said.
I started to hoist myself up onto the railing, but he gave me a sit-down look. I paced the deck instead.
“Just take tomorrow to think about it,” he said.
“You mean pray about it.”
His eyebrows went up.
I shrugged. “That’s what you always do, right?”
“I do. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to make her not call. It means maybe you’ll know what you’re supposed to say, either beforehand or when you open your mouth.”
“I wish Yeshua would just come in and drive out her demons,” I said in full Blurt mode.
Lou didn’t have a forehead high enough for his eyebrows at that point. “I wish he would too,” he said, as if he knew exactly what I was babbling about. “We can still pray for that, of course. But let’s also pray that you’ll know what to say to your mom when she calls you. If she calls you. She may not.”